All it takes is a small idea to give rise to a big movement. Something similar happened in the small village of Tumda. In this nondescript village tucked away in the Gadarwara block of Narsinghpur district in Madhya Pradesh, a small idea of setting up a rural library has turned into something big. The rural library idea has now taken the shape of an all-India book collection drive, where people are voluntarily joining as volunteers and contributing books for the underprivileged rural children. In an interaction with Indian Masterminds, SDM of Gadarwara block, IAS officer Ms. Srishti Jayant Deshmukh, reveals the interesting story of this initiative –how it started and how it gained momentum to become a pan-India drive.
THE BIRTH OF AN IDEA
The officer narrates the real-life story of a boy from Tumda’s primary school who goes to study in NIT Surathkal, Mangalore, and who comes back to his native village during the lockdown period and notices that the children lack resources required for a good education. In the absence of a proper infrastructure and reading materials, the children of Tumda village were struggling to study. It was then that an idea clicked in his mind to start a book collection drive to set up a small library in his village. Once the idea took shape, he approached Aashraya Foundation and the local administration for help.
Ms. Deshmukh remembers: “As I’m personally interested in education, so I thought why not give it a try. If we get enough books from donors, these can be donated to orphanages and used to set up libraries. So, we created a Google form to execute our idea. It was astonishing for me that in just two days, more than 1500 volunteers connected with us, not only from Madhya Pradesh but from across the country.”
TOOK CONCRETE SHAPE
Once the book collection drive was started, within a short period of time a considerable number of books were collected in the month of October. “As one volunteer from one city is collecting around 1000 books per day, we have already collected around 1 lakh books, and we are expecting the number to touch 1.5 lakhs as the month ends. The volunteers are doing such an excellent job,” the officer says.
TURNED INTO A MASSIVE DRIVE
What initially was just a trial to see how many people show interest and help to accumulate books for the needy rural children, soon turned into a full-scale national book collection drive. As news about the drive spread, more and more people joined in, and it became a big movement. Ms. Desmukh says, “As Aashraya’s volunteers are working not only in Madhya Pradesh but in various other states also, we are getting very good response from far away states and UTs like Andaman and Nicobar, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Kashmir, etc. It has been a massive drive and a massive success for all of us.”
President of Aashraya Foundation, Mr. Priyanshu told Indian Masterminds, “Our team is working in 25 states and UTs, where we are collecting really good number of books everyday. We are now planning to donate these books to NGOs, government schools in remote areas, orphanages etc. in states like Karnataka, Maharashtra, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, etc.” Aashraya foundation is a student led NGO started as Maa Narmada Sena (MNS) in June 2019 which later became Team Aashraya at NITK (National Institute of Techology karnataka surathkal) in October 2019. Team has also contributed actively during the period of Covid 19 and working primarily for Shiksha, chikitsa, Paryavaran, Vastra and Asra.
THE POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Ms. Deshmukh reveals how social media was so helpful to spread the word about this book collection drive. Most people got to know from social media platforms about the drive and joined it. “As our volunteers would go from home to home to collect books, we had given their numbers on Instagram, Google forms and, also, on especially created city-wise WhatsApp groups. In this way, in a short time, we were able to mobilize large number of people. At that point, I realized the power of social media in welfare work,” she says.
EXPANSION PLAN
She further says that “by looking at the success of our campaign, we thought of expanding our plan. Now the drive that was started for setting up a library in Tumda village is set to benefit several other villages in many states.” She also says that many of her batchmates are showing interest in this cause and hence, “Aashraya volunteers will be coordinating with the district administration in their respective places to expand this drive.”
NEXT PHASE OF ACTION
The selection of villages for donation of books, the setting up of proper infrastructure for libraries, and categorizing the books of different genres that have been collected, are immediate tasks at hand. “This is a moment of celebration as our campaign has shown really good results in such a short period. But, as people came forward as volunteers as well as donors and showed their faith in us, a big task now will be to categorize those books and send them off to different areas depending on the kind of target audience we have,” says Ms. Deshmukh.
She is hopeful that they will soon complete those tasks, too. And the small seed that germinated in a small village will grow into a big tree with branches growing out in different directions.
To connect with this drive, you can follow the Instagram page aashraya_07 https://instagram.com/aashraya_07?utm_medium=copy_link and contact the numbers given.
